DailyApp: Bump (iOS, Android): Now, Send Files with a Bump

We have seen our share of apps over the past decade. Some of these have been good, some unworthy of attention, some being handy rather than spectacular, and well, there have been a few that just have made our jaws drop. One of our favourites in the last-mentioned category has been Bump, an app that let users exchange photographs by just bumping their phones with each other. Yes, you read that right, and what’s more, it actually worked – you ran the app, selected the photograph, ran the app on the other device, bumped the two together and hey, you had just transferred the picture. No Bluetooth or password hassles. All you needed was a decent Internet connection and transferring images was just a matter of a bump. Literally. Given that many devices came with stilted Bluetooth connectivity (yes, we are looking at YOU, Cupertino), apps like Bump made transferring information a relatively smooth and painless affair.

There was a catch, of course – you could only exchange images and contacts by this method. And it initially worked only between phones.

The developers took matters a bit further ahead when they updated Bump to work with computers – you now could select a photograph on your device, go to http://bu.mp and once the site loaded, tap the spacebar for the image to get transferred to the computer to be downloaded and/or shared as per the user’s wish. Again, simple, speedy and effective.

And now comes another update, which adds yet more muscle to an already handy app. The new Bump lets iPhone and iPad users now send music, videos and files to a computer or another device by just tapping it or its spacebar, depending on the receiving device. The app remains as lightweight as ever – 5.6 MB on iOS and 7.5 MB on Android – and well, it still works rather well. Especially on Android, where you can access most of the files on the device. Things are a bit more restricted on the iPhone and iPad – if you have saved a document in Pages or an app like Documents to Go, you will not be able to see it in Bump (you can opt to open a file attachment in Bump, though and send that across). And before you get ideas of piracy, the app will NOT transfer DRM protected files, so hold that particular horse in check.

Best of all, Bump remains as easy to use and effective as ever. You start the app, choose what you wish to share and then start the app on another phone or tablet or just head over to http://bu.mp on a computer’s browser and then either bump the two phones together or tap the spacebar of the computer with the phone. And the files still get transferred without any problems, once you have given the connection a go-ahead (you need to do so just once). Mind you, you DO need a good Internet connection to get the most out of the app. Do not even dream of using it on anything less than 3G or a broadband connection, else you will be left with a file that literally takes ages to download.

But if Internet connectivity is not an issue and you wish to transfer files across multiple devices, then a simpler way of doing so perhaps exists not. Definitely worth a download, we think. It still makes our jaws drop.

Nimish Dubey Editor-at-large Nimish Dubey has been writing for more than a decade now (well, Windows 3.1 was around and Apple was on the verge of being finished when he started). He has been published in a number of publications including The Times of India, Mint, The Economic Times, Mid-Day and Femina on subjects that vary from tech write -ups to book reviews to music album round ups. He managed to interview Michael Schumacher once and write two books for young adults along the way.